


we shall find a pleasure (in the dimness of the stars)

by andibeth82



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Homeless, Gen, Kid Clint Barton, Kid Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 16:53:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7540501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t have a home,” he says when he finally speaks. He doesn’t sound sad, just defeated, as if he’s accepted that there’s nothing he can do about his position. “Just that.” He points to a pile of blankets next to a black bag hidden in the corner, and Natasha raises an eyebrow.</p><p>“You live on the street?”</p><p>“So what?” he asks defensively, without bothering to cull his inflection. Natasha shrugs.</p><p>“So. I do, too.”</p><p>OR: the one where Clint and Natasha meet as kids, and find that you don't have to go through everything alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we shall find a pleasure (in the dimness of the stars)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/gifts).



> So, I know you're a fan of AUs, and a Clint/Natasha kid AU is something I've been wanting to find the opportunity to write for awhile. I had fun with this, and I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Title from William Wordsworth.

The dog’s name is Lily.

That’s what they tell her, and that’s what she believes. After she’s shot him four times without blinking, she learns that the dog’s name was actually Vanya, and that he had belonged to the family of one of the girls in the Red Room. He had been shaved and re-named in order to make sure that the girl didn’t have any emotional attachment to the animal she was supposed to kill.

(She advances to the next round of training and when her bedmate talks about her family pet, she never says anything about it, just bites her tongue and tastes a lot of blood.)

Natalia Alianovna Romanova is ten years old when she arrives at the Red Room. She is eleven when she learns how to use a knife for something other than cutting fruit or ropes, she is twelve when she learns how to use her fingers to stop someone’s sight without making too much of a mess, she is thirteen when her handlers decide that being the best means that she can be released into the world. She arrives in New York via a plane that takes her overseas from Russia and is immediately herded into the care of an old woman with three cats who lives in a run-down apartment in Hells Kitchen. Her orders are, for the most part, simple: follow her mission and eventually kill everyone who is a liability.

_Everyone._

She finishes the job within a week and on the night that she is supposed to kill the old woman who has taken her in -- the old woman who knows and waits for her fate because this is what people involved in this program do -- Natasha runs. She leaves through the open window on the second floor and doesn’t look back; when she gets far enough away she hides in the darkest part of an alley and takes a pair of scissors to her hair, ones she’s stolen from the kitchen, shearing off as much as she can manage. She steals a box of dye from a drug store and spends the next hour in the bathroom of a deli, changing her color from muted brown to bright red.

(Red was too easy. Red was too obvious. Red was what she was and they would never expect her to make it a part of herself. Natasha will never _not_ be hunted, but she can at least make the game a little more fun.)

 

* * *

 

 

New York City is unforgiving. The weather is either too hot or too cold, the food is too expensive, and the cops are too rude. But the places to sleep and hide are plentiful, and there’s so much crime in certain areas that Natasha can get in and out of places easily without causing much of a stir. When the nights aren’t too chilly and it’s not raining or snowing, when she can sit on the rooftop of an apartment building and stare up at the sky without feeling like someone is going to sneak up behind her and kill her, well…it’s pretty nice.

Anything is nicer than being back in Russia, in barracks that felt like a prison, in walls that constantly closed in on her.

Natasha roughs it for about three weeks, more or less, when she decides to try her hand at getting off the streets and into places like hotels that didn’t check for guests. She’s been following a few establishments for weeks, watching the guests that leave and the ones that arrive, assessing how easy it would be to sneak in and find solace in a lobby bathroom or a closet.

It’s as she’s eyeing a well-dressed man that she hears it and then sees it, a scuffle taking place somewhere to her left. Natasha’s first instinct is to ignore the sound, but she’s been trained to pick up on anything that presents itself as a threat. And even though she’s not truly focused on what’s going on near her, it still catches her attention, enough that she finds herself temporarily abandoning her mission to investigate.

There’s a boy (and the only reason she even knows that, since she can barely see what’s happening, is because there are high pitched grunts of pain that definitely don’t belong to the men beating him up), and although he’s trying to put up a decent fight, Natasha can tell it’s a losing battle. Small fists swing up and legs kick out but the guys attacking him are bigger, stronger, and clearly more vicious. When they move off of him and finally drag him up, Natasha’s vision is filled with a swollen face that harbors a split lip and a black eye. Per the usual New York attitude that Natasha’s learned to adapt to, everyone who could do anything about the fight is either avoiding it entirely or staying away from the scene. Natasha moves without thinking, coming up behind one of the bigger thugs.

“ _Hey_!” she shouts loudly, and when the man turns around, she doesn’t give him a chance to think before she slams her fist into his mouth. He cries out in pain and Natasha moves instantly, delivering a blow to the second thug’s stomach, and a roundhouse kick to the third’s back, causing him to double over. She returns her attention to the biggest offender, who is advancing on her again, and grabs the arm that comes up to attack her, twisting it behind his back until she hears a loud crack.

This howl of pain is louder than the one that had come before it, and it seems to deter him enough to back away, his friends following. Natasha watches them limp off, breathing hard, pushing hair out of her eyes.

“Hey,” she says, turning her gaze to the kid still huddled on the ground. She frowns, crouching down, hesitant to touch him because she knows all too well how people can react to unwanted affection when they’ve been compromised in some way. “You okay?”

The boy’s answer is to apparently deposit what Natasha assumes is either breakfast or lunch or possibly both onto the ground next to him. She sighs, averting her eyes, more out of privacy than anything else -- she’s long learned to cull her reactions to anything that would gross most people out, the people who didn’t grow up around blood and gore and broken bodies. As she does so, she notices two small devices lying on the ground next to her, so small she could have almost stepped on them by mistake. Natasha waits until the boy is down to dry heaves, spitting up nothing more than saliva, and then offers them out.

“These yours?” she asks, indicating the pair of hearing aids that look like they’ve been around the block. The boy nods, dragging a hand across his bloody nose.

“Thanks,” he mutters, wiping dirtied palms on his pants and shoving them in his ears. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Natasha asks, dusting off her own hands as she stands. The boy startles momentarily and then looks a little embarrassed.

“I don’t know. Because I am. Because you had to save me. Because I just made a mess.” There’s something hidden in his tone that seems self-deprecating, and Natasha frowns.

“You didn’t _ask_ those thugs to come beat you up, did you?”

“Course not,” he mutters moodily, his upper lip curling in a way that makes Natasha think he’s a little too on edge. She makes a face.

“Then, okay. You got yourself in a shit position, but you don’t need to apologize for it. It happens.” She watches as he pulls himself up and sighs as he steadies himself. “Go home and forget about this, okay?”

The boy shoves his hands in his pockets, wincing as they slide against fabric and what Natasha knows are still fresh scrapes.

“Come on, go home,” Natasha says again, turning around. She needs to move on and find a place to sleep, preferably somewhere she can clean up if it’s not the hotel she’d planned on sneaking into, but something about the boy is nagging at her, slowing her will to move.

“I don’t have a home,” he says when he finally speaks. He doesn’t sound sad, just defeated, as if he’s accepted that there’s nothing he can do about his position. “Just that.” He points to a pile of blankets next to a black bag hidden in the corner, and Natasha raises an eyebrow.

“You live on the street?”

“So what?” he asks defensively, without bothering to cull his inflection. Natasha shrugs.

“So. I do, too.”

The boy’s eyes grow wide and then narrow into small slits. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” Natasha says curtly. “Seriously.” She’s not getting into this now; she knows it’s not the time and place and they need to move before someone notices them and reports them to any kind of law enforcement. Natasha has no idea what she’s doing with her life, and doesn’t know what she _wants_ to do with her life, but she refuses to go to prison for any part of it.

“We gotta go,” she says finally, and the boy blanches.

“ _We_?”

“That was your home, right?” Natasha eyes the pile of blankets. “You gonna stay here while the cops come and take you in and bring you to jail or some other holding center for kids like us?” She can almost see the fear passing through his eyes as she says the words, and it makes her wonder. She figures she’s probably more hardened than usual from her training, but if you lived on the streets long enough, you garnered a certain amount of stability. You _couldn’t_ make it if you were too scared to survive. She can’t tell if it’s innately ingrained in him to be anxious or if it’s just a byproduct of his current situation, but she decides she can figure that out later, if she really wants to.

“Come on,” Natasha says again, grabbing for his wrist, taking his silence for an answer. He moves slowly behind her, gripping her fingers as if he’s afraid to let go.

 

* * *

 

 

Trying to sneak into a hotel with another person is out of the question, so Natasha abandons her plan for the time being and opts for her usual place: the roof of a building that she can scale via fire escape. She drags the kid up by the hand, being careful not to push him too hard given that she’s not quite sure how many other injuries he’s sustained that she can’t see.

“So what’s your name?” Natasha asks once she’s helped him onto the roof and handed him a towel from the bag she’s stashed there. He swallows.

“Clint.”

“Clint,” she repeats, watching him wipe his face. “I’m Natasha.”

“Hi,” he mumbles, his voice so low she has to struggle to hear it. “Is this where you live?”

“Yeah,” Natasha says slowly. “I guess. I mean, we don’t really live _anywhere_ , do we?”

Clint shakes his head. “Guess not.” He moves his right arm in a way that looks painful. “How long’ve you been on the streets?”

“Awhile,” Natasha says evasively, because she’s not really sure how much she wants to open up at the moment. She focuses on his body instead, on the uncomfortable bulge she can see through his shirt. “Your shoulder’s dislocated. You need to pop it back in.”

“Happens sometimes,” Clint says and the way he responds makes Natasha wonder _how_ often it happens. She gestures loosely.

“I can try to help, if you want.”

“Nah,” Clint says, taking a breath. “I got it.” Before Natasha can answer, he maneuvers his palm near the top half of his arm and pushes hard, letting out a yell before he collapses backwards. Natasha moves instantly, her heart pounding against the grey pallor shadowing his face and the beads of sweat dripping down his hairline. She doesn’t realize she’s been holding her breath until he groans, opening his eyes, which are pain-filled but also clear.

“That was stupid,” she assesses, watching the color slowly come back to his cheeks. Clint smiles weakly, unmoving.

“You’ve never had to fend for yourself? Take care of your own injuries out here?”

Natasha doesn’t immediately answer, ignoring the phantom throb of the knife wound in her side -- an injury from before her time on the street, a reminder of the scars that she’d obtained, the ones that she knows will never fully go away. “Not the point,” she says when she finally speaks. “You’re dehydrated. You probably haven’t eaten today and you just got the crap beat out of you, and you’re in no condition --”

“You sound like my brother,” Clint mutters, closing his eyes again. Natasha stops, furrowing her brow.

“You have a brother?”

“ _Had_ ,” Clint corrects with such harshness that Natasha knows she doesn’t have to ask the question that had been next on her mind. She decides to pry anyway.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Clint says. “Honestly. I don’t. He disappeared, went out on his own. We’re cut from the same cloth, him and me...I figured if he could survive on the street, so could I.”

There’s more to his story, Natasha can tell, and there are things she wants to say, things like _not everyone is cut out for the street. Some of us just have no choice._ But as much as she’s admittedly curious and as much as she wants to speak her mind, she figures he’s been through enough for tonight.

“You can sleep here,” she says, gesturing to the pile of blankets in the corner. “I’ll be okay on the ground.”

“Yeah? Don’t wanna inconvenience you,” Clint says carefully and Natasha curls her lip.

“Trust me, I’m used to it. I’ve slept on worse.” She glances at his arm. “Besides, your shoulder is still sore. You could use something a little nicer.” Natasha doesn’t say the next words, the ones imply he’ll have to leave tomorrow. She doesn’t mind meeting someone else, especially if they’re in her position and understand the risks of survival, but she also needs to take care of herself. And Natasha knows that she can’t do that while babysitting.

“Thanks,” he says, and the light that had come back to his eyes when he was talking about his brother seems to dull. As Natasha watches him lie down, she wonders when he had last been around anyone who actually _cared_ about his well-being. For her, it had been ages, but it was something she had forced herself to become used to by now.

She stays sitting up, alternating between playing with her knife and counting the lights in the buildings across street until one by one, some of them start flicker out. When the sky begins to pull a blanket over most of its stars, she decides to attempt sleep as well. Natasha knows she’ll only get a few hours before waking up, but at least it would be better than nothing. She’d come away from the fight okay; it wasn’t anything that could compromise her, but she can already feel two or three bruises starting to form on her arms, where the muggers had tried to attack her.

Natasha has barely drifted off when she wakes with a start, her senses shoving themselves into overdrive thanks to sounds that are out of the ordinary -- an intense rustling, a whimper that sounds like an animal and a small crash. She bolts upright from where she’s been curled into the ground, leaping to her feet with her fists curled, a trained response. The darkness is still, and there are no noticeable threats that she can see immediately, but the sounds are still coming from somewhere behind her and it’s not until she fully turns around that she figures out why.

Clint’s huddled against the blankets, bent into a half moon, the same position Natasha knows she was in before she woke up. Unlike Natasha, however, he’s a tangle of thrashing limbs and muttered cries. As she gets closer, she can see the way his eyes are squeezed shut, as if he’s trying to worm his thoughts out of his head while he sleeps, his legs kicking out and hitting some random debris that litters the roof.

Natasha stalls, unsure what to do. She has no idea if this is a random occurrence or not, if it’s a nightmare or something that requires actual medical attention, or if he’s going to wake up and punch her in the face. She debates leaving the situation as it is, letting him tough it out the way he probably would if this was any other night, but the more she tries to ignore his distress the more she finds she can’t, something uneasy clawing at her stomach.

“Hey,” Natasha says quietly, coming around to crouch above him. She grabs the side of his face with two hands, tightening her fingers firmly but gently around his jawline. “Hey!”

Clint’s eyes fly open at her second attempt to rouse him. His pupils are erratic, almost crazed with a combination of what Natasha recognizes as fright and confusion, a look she remembers from girls who had woken up in the same state.

“Hey, Clint…” And she realizes that she has no idea what else to say, because taking care of people is not exactly her forte and never has been. “You, uh. You had a nightmare, I think.”

She watches his eyes settle, his breaths evening out, and when she’s convinced he’s calmed himself down enough she reluctantly takes her hands off his face.

“You okay?” she asks after another long moment and he nods slowly.

“Yeah,” he says, pushing himself up on his elbows. Natasha helps him into a sitting position.

“Pretty intense dream,” she says conversationally, rocking back on her heels, watching the way his face changes. He shakes his head.

“It’s nothing.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t seem like nothing,” she says. “You were practically freaking out while you were unconscious.”

“Look, I said it was nothing, okay?” Clint wraps his arms around his legs and Natasha sees him bite down on his lip as his shoulder moves. She sighs.

“I have dreams sometimes, too, if it makes you feel any better.”

The look Clint gives her when his head rises is full of curiosity. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Natasha confirms. “Not every night, but once in awhile.” She lets her fingers run across the scars on her wrists and swallows down the lump in her throat. “They’re usually all a little different.”

Clint leans over, resting his forehead on his knees. Natasha waits, because there’s something about the way he’s moving that makes her think he’s actually going to talk, if she doesn’t press, if she gives him enough space. She inches back even further, stretching out until her legs reach the edge of the blanket.

“My parents, uh...my dad was kind of...he wasn’t the best role model, if you get my drift,” Clint says finally. “I spent a lot of time worried that he would come into my room and kill me.”

 _I spent a lot of time worrying my bedmate would break free from her handcuffs and kill me_ , Natasha wants to say, but she knows it’s not really the right response.

“I guess that stayed with me. Even when I know he can’t hurt me anymore, I still see him, all angry. Yelling at my mom and everyone. Knowing what was on the other end of that rage…”

“And knowing what possibly waited for you when you couldn’t control every single second,” Natasha finishes. “Yeah. I get it.”

Clint nods. “Sorry.”

Natasha groans in spite of herself. “You’re apologizing _again_?”

Clint flinches. “Yeah. Well.” He shrugs. “For the nightmare stuff.”

Natasha wants to roll her eyes again, but feels her gaze soften when she looks at him, seeing the guilt in his eyes.

“Like I said, it’s okay.” She squeezes his hand. “I told you. I’ve got nightmares, too.”

 

* * *

 

 

Clint does manage to fall back asleep eventually but Natasha doesn’t, her mind uncharacteristically keyed up. She’s used to running on little sleep; being on the street made it hard for her to feel truly rested at any one time. But she’s not used to being unable to turn her mind off, and she’s not used to worrying about people other than herself.

Even though she knows they should be moving on sooner rather than later, she lets him sleep through the morning, mostly out of pity because she has a feeling this is the first time in forever that he’s been able to get a good night’s rest. When he finally does wake, the slow, languid way in which he comes back to consciousness only confirms her suspicions.

“I’d call you Sleeping Beauty, but that would be rude,” Natasha says sarcastically, watching him sit up. Clint rubs his eyes, before squinting up at the sky, and then over into Natasha’s face.

“Is it late?”

“Late enough,” she replies with a shrug. “I decided after last night that you deserved to sleep in a little.”

Clint nods slowly, stretching his legs. “I don’t remember the last time I actually slept,” he admits and Natasha bites down on a small smile.

“I figured. Hard to do out here, anyway.” She tosses him a bottle of water. “By the way, that might hold you over until you find food.”

Clint catches the bottle easily and downs most of it in one go, only coming up for air when there’s about a quarter left. “Are we leaving?” he asks as he wipes a hand across his mouth. The words are slightly obscured, but Natasha manages to catch most of them.

“We…” She trails off, suddenly not knowing how to respond, because every single sentence that she had come up with about how to gently address their separation suddenly seems wrong. “Yes,” she continues with a sigh. “We can’t stay up here all day. Sometimes, the tenants come up, and I can’t have them find us.”

Clint looks at her for a long time and then drops his gaze to the ground. “You were going to ask me to leave.”

“Clint.” She stops, watching his face. “It’s not...look, it’s hard enough to be out here on my own. I can’t worry about babysitting someone else.”

“Who said anything about _babysitting_?” Clint asks, his voice hurt. “I can take care of myself.”

There’s fear hidden in his answer, too. It makes her insides ache, and she can’t quite explain why, because she knows she’s not conditioned to have these feelings, particularly towards someone she doesn’t even know. “You can’t _just_ take care of yourself,” Natasha says finally, pushing the emotions away. “You have to hustle.”

“I can hustle,” he defends. “How do you think I’ve been surviving out here?”

Natasha sighs again, pushing the air from her lips in one long, drawn out sound. “How long have you been on the streets, Clint?”

“Dunno,” he replies with a shrug. “Like, four days.”

“Four days,” Natasha repeats. “I’ve been out here for almost a _month_ , and I know a thing or two about staying alive.”

“Clearly, so do I.” He folds his arms, cringing slightly, and Natasha puts her hand on his shoulder.

“Still sore?”

He nods and she presses down gently, feeling him react even though she can tell he’s trying not to be affected by her movements. “It might be like that for awhile,” Natasha says with a frown. “Best thing to do is keep moving it around so it doesn’t stick.”

“So then I’ll find something to make myself useful for after you leave,” he says dejectedly, throwing his good arm in her direction. “Thanks, by the way.”

Natasha nods, taking her hand off his arm. “Good luck,” she says quietly, squaring her shoulders before turning towards the door. She lets herself get about five paces, determined not to turn back, before she feels herself break.

“Oh, fuck,” she mutters, turning on her heel. When she meets his eyes, they’re wide with surprise, and she can see that he’s been trying not to let himself get upset.

“One week. You and me. After that, we’re both on our own.”

 

* * *

 

 

The first place Natasha takes Clint to is Washington Square Park, because she’s sweaty and he’s still dirty, bloody scrapes of red across his legs and black streaks across his nose.

“You sure about this?” asks Clint a little nervously as they sit on the edge of the fountain, which is spraying water gaily in their direction. He casts a nervous glance around the other kids that are running through the spray, apparently unaware that two dirty children are going to ruin their fun.

“Yes,” Natasha says, sliding into the water fully clothed and dunking her entire body. She comes up blowing out air, wiping water out of her eyes and then hoists herself back onto the stone ledge, holding out her hand expectantly.

Clint fishes his hearing aids out of his ears and then wades in slowly. Natasha watches as he bobs a little self-consciously before submerging himself, resurfacing and scrubbing at the parts of his body where the dirt seems particularly sticky.

“It’s not exactly effective, but it works,” she says as she stretches out on the grass, lying down next to him, having returned his aids. “In the summer, it’s easier to go to the ocean. Coney Island, usually, they don’t care about us punks too much. In the winter, there are the homeless shelters.” She stops, choosing her next words carefully. “They’re okay for that.”

“What do you mean?” Clint mumbles from beside her, his eyes closed, and Natasha stares back up at the clouds.

“Nothing,” she says. “I just think that it's better not to get involved with places that take advantage of your vulnerability.”

She hears his deep intake of breath, as if he wants to say something, and steels herself as she waits. But the words don’t come, and instead, there’s a quiet, uninterrupted stream of inhales that makes Natasha realize he’s fallen asleep again.

She rolls over onto her side, propping herself up on one elbow while wiping strands of still-wet hair out of her eyes. It’s the first time she’s really gotten a good look at him, and Natasha notices that in sleep he looks even younger, the worry lines around his mouth smoothing out, his face relaxed and calm. She catches herself wondering where he really came from and what had caused him so much pain, and why he refused to let someone else carry that weight, but finds her throat closing up at the thought.

“Need more of my life story?” he asks with his eyes still closed and she startles, caught off guard.

“Asshole,” she mutters as she flops back onto her spine. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees his lips turn up in a small grin.

 

* * *

 

 

Natasha considers herself stealthy, all things considered. Most of her steals are small, but she’s quick, and she never draws attention to herself. Clint’s stealing is a little more harried -- more daring, and much more nerve-wracking. It’s less smooth, but he’s still good, and Natasha finds herself more impressed than she wants to be.

In most cases, they complement each other well enough -- what she’s not as good at, he’s a little better at, and what he’s not entirely versed in because he hasn’t been on his own as long, she can take care of. But there are differences, and not just the ones that come with the fact that one of them is more capable of handling bad guys in a fight. For one thing, Natasha has never tried to draw attention to herself. And so when Clint suggests offhandedly that they should perform for money -- by putting themselves in the middle of Central Park, no less -- Natasha wants to slap him.

“That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” she declares while they make themselves comfortable on a street corner, stretching out with their legs touching. “Why would you want to make people care about us? Why would _they_ even want to?”

“Because,” Clint says a little impatiently. “New York people are dumb as fuck when it comes to where they throw their money. Show them a shiny thing and no matter how dirty you are, they’ll come running and shower you with their generosity.”

“You sound like a bad fortune teller, and you underestimate how they perceive homeless people,” Natasha points out as she adjusts the blanket. “Especially children.”

“ _Especially_ children,” Clint repeats. “Which means that they’re going to feel even more pity for us, because we’re not seventy and trying to beg for food.”

Natasha still feels uneasy about the idea but against her better judgement, she lets Clint take the lead. He sets up in the park with a few plastic hoops while she sits a few paces away, cross-legged on the grass, watching closely. Clint places an empty soup can on the ground in front of him and nods encouragingly in her direction as he starts twirling, the smile never falling off his face, though Natasha knows the happy, go-lucky appearance can’t be entirely genuine.

His initial response is the usual reaction to street performers -- tourists glancing this way and that as they shuffle past, kids tugging on their parents’ arms to point out the excitement, people stopping long enough to appear impressed but moving on before they can actually give any money. To Natasha’s surprise, however, a few people do linger long enough to drop a dollar or two into the can, and once there’s a decent amount of bills from other interested parties, the money keeps coming.

“Twenty-five dollars,” she says with a raised eyebrow, going through their cash after he finishes, her fingers combing through crumpled bills and grubby coins. “This is more money than I’ve seen in weeks.”

Clint shrugs. “Told you I could take care of us,” he says a little haughtily, but there’s a grin on his face that Natasha catches, a look of pleasure that makes her think there’s something to be said about the fact that he’s done something for himself. She smiles back.

“I believe you,” she says finally and he smiles again.

 

* * *

 

 

They decide to treat themselves more than they usually would when it comes to dinner later that night, splitting the cash between them and forking over seven dollars each for an over-sized deli sandwich. Natasha finds a spot for them under the scaffolding of a building that’s under construction, and watches him stuff most of the sandwich into his mouth greedily.

“Do you always eat like that?” she asks, half in jest, as he tries to swallow a particularly large piece of bread he’s broken off. Clint glances at her shyly.

“Sometimes I go awhile without eating and I forget to think about it,” he mumbles as he picks at a stray tomato. Natasha feels a sudden sting in the corner of her eye, and she blinks it away before she can think about what it means.

“Well, now that you proved people care about things like hoop twirling, maybe we can make our own luck a little more,” she says, fighting to keep her voice light and optimistic. Clint shrugs listlessly, focusing on his sandwich.

“I guess,” he says, picking apart a piece of turkey. They eat together in silence, Natasha unsure of how to move the conversation forward and also wanting to concentrate on her own food. When they’ve wadded up and thrown away their wrappers and tin foils, she drags him up by the arm.

“Come on,” she says, grateful to have a reason to talk again. “We gotta start heading back for the night. I don’t want someone else to take our spot.”

Clint nods and Natasha leads them through the streets and across the avenues. They’ve gone about four blocks when Natasha suddenly realizes that Clint’s not next to her, and she turns to see him stopped a few paces away, standing in the middle of the street.

He’s talking to another homeless guy, someone definitely older, as far as Natasha can tell. As she gets closer, she sees him starting to hand over the rest of their money. Natasha walks faster, beelining towards him, stepping in the middle of the exchange.

“Sorry,” she apologizes, pushing Clint away and then down the street, despite his protests. The man he’d been talking to isn’t happy either, Natasha surmises, given the way he starts screaming obscenities at them, and she tries to ignore the yelling as they hurry off, desperate to get as far away from the public eye as possible.

“What the _fuck_ were you thinking?” she spits out angrily when they’ve gone another few blocks and turned down a less crowded street. Clint looks a little stung but she’s too frustrated to worry about hurting his feelings at the moment.

“Trying to help.”

“That’s all the money we have right now and we _need_ that,” Natasha says sharply. “For food. For _our_ food.”

“I know,” Clint says a little helplessly. “I just...I don’t know, I wanted to do something.”

She sees the way his face falls and sighs, suddenly feeling tired. “Look, you can’t help everyone,” she says as gently as she can manage, putting an arm around his shoulders, as if that’ll help the comfort she feels like she can’t provide with just her voice. “You have to worry about yourself. You _have_ to put yourself first, Clint. Otherwise, you won’t make it out here.”

Clint doesn’t answer immediately and Natasha sighs again, shoving him playfully, the way she’s gotten used to.

“Come on,” she says when he remains unresponsive, and they walk the rest of the way back to their designated rooftop in silence.

 

* * *

 

 

For the first time in awhile, Natasha and Clint don’t talk before going to bed.

She’s not exactly sure when it had started, given that they’ve only spent a few days together. At some point, it became almost second nature that Clint would offer up a question, or Natasha would make a comment and that would lead to them lying on their backs on the roof, covered with their respective blankets, trading conversation until one of them got tired. Natasha suspects that maybe Clint’s just the type of person who feels more secure when he’s with someone, and while she doesn’t doubt that he’s survived on his own just fine before they met, she also wonders if it’s more of a detriment than he’d ever let on.

She’s halfway to falling asleep when she hears strangled noises coming from beside her. At this point, she’s catalogued the nightmares, she knows what they mean and she isn’t so jarred by the sounds anymore. But the more she listens, the more she feels concerned, because as far as she can tell, whatever his mind is feeding him aren’t the usual memories. She’s even more surprised when she leans over and finds him awake, breathing hard into part of the thin blanket, pausing every so often to gasp in air.

“Clint?” she asks tentatively, getting up and moving to the other side of him, so she’s not bending over upside down.

“That could’ve been me,” is all he says before he stops talking again, and Natasha’s first thought is that he’s talking about his brother, or his father, or maybe someone else from his past. She’s about to ask what he means, just to be sure, when suddenly something in her mind clicks -- the memory of earlier that afternoon and of Clint offering up his own hard-earned money to someone who wasn’t as lucky and might never be.

“That could’ve been me.”

Natasha swallows and looks away, because she can’t lie to him. It could have been. It might be, one day. It might be both of them, depending on what happened. You made your own luck on the street, and things either turned around because you hit the jackpot or because life decided to give you a break, but there was no way to predict that.

“I know,” she says quietly, lying down next to him so that they’re forehead to forehead, closely intimate. She grabs his fingers, squeezing hard, and thinks of the Red Room, she thinks of the old woman in the apartment, she thinks of a world tinted in red and red and red and how she wished, once upon a time, that she had someone who understood what it felt like to be so scared about a future that didn't exist.

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

 

A few days later, while they’re trying to pass the time with an old deck of cards Natasha has found in the garbage, Clint finally asks what she’d been hoping he might forget or not bother to talk about.

“You said you had nightmares,” he says as he puts down an ace over her queen, and she frowns, mostly at the card, even though it’s his words that have caused the reaction.

“Yeah. I do,” she says, keeping her voice neutral. She looks up to find Clint staring at her.

“What?” she asks a little too sharply, before catching herself. He shakes his head.

“Nothing. I just was curious. I didn’t know if they were like mine.”

Natasha wants to laugh, but she doesn’t, largely because it’s not the right response. _They’re nothing like yours_ , she wants to say bitterly. She doesn’t doubt that Clint’s childhood memories weren’t worth the trouble they caused his brain, but there was little she felt could compare to killing people and animals and torturing for fun -- for survival.

“Not exactly,” she admits. “I’ve learned to control them.”

“But you still _have_ them.” He’s looking at her curiously, and in a way she feels she can’t ignore.

“Yes,” Natasha says slowly. “More than most people would probably realize.”

Clint looks down, throwing another card on top of the pile, and Natasha wonders if they’re even really playing anymore. “Were they because people did bad things to you?”

“Depends on how you look at it,” she replies evenly. “What is this, twenty questions?”

Clint does look taken aback at that. “I just wanted to know,” he says in a voice that sounds a little resigned. “Not like we’re in this for the long haul. Your move, by the way.”

Natasha glances down at her cards, sifting through the deck she’s holding in her hand, wondering if it’s even worth it to say anything. She doesn’t owe him an explanation about her life, nor does she like to give herself up easily. At the same time, there’s a feeling she can’t shake, the nagging thought that maybe if she _did_ say something, he’d be the one person who might understand.

“I came from somewhere...different,” she says carefully, putting down her cards. Clint puts down his own, and she knows he doesn’t miss the seriousness of her voice.

“An orphanage?”

“Kind of,” Natasha says, wondering how the hell someone actually describes the Red Room. “It’s a school, basically. A place where they take girls who need to serve their country. We learn how to survive. We learn how to do things that are bad.” She stops, wondering if she’ll need to keep making her point, but Clint seems to get it; she can tell by the way he’s looking at her.

“Did you do those things?” he asks when he finally speaks. "The bad things?" The card game has all but been abandoned, and Natasha bites her lip.

“Not here. But in Russia, I did.” She watches Clint’s eyes go wide as the words sink in.

“You’re Russian?”

“I was,” she says, feeling a little sad. “I was shipped over here to work. Or, well, to do what they call work, at least. I don’t really know what I am now. I just know I didn’t want to be a killer anymore, so I ran the first chance I could get.”

“Jesus,” Clint mutters and Natasha suddenly feels anxious. The number of people she’d told any version of a truthful story to when it came to her past could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and most of those people hadn’t ended up surviving.

“Anyway, so. I have nightmares. About things I did. Or didn’t do, if that makes sense.”

“Yeah,” Clint says with a small laugh. “It actually does.” He waves a hand around. “I keep thinking what life would have been like if I had ever hit back, with my dad. Maybe I’d have been somewhere else right now.”

“Maybe,” Natasha says, suddenly realizing she knows what he means. She pushes the thought out of her mind. “Guess the street’s not so bad sometimes, right? When you think about it that way?”

“Guess not,” Clint says, picking up his cards again. He offers her a small smile and Natasha manages to smile back.

 

* * *

 

 

“Do you wanna know about my life?” Clint asks the next day while they’re walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. They’ve scrounged enough for two vanilla cones, and Clint eats his in about five seconds while Natasha takes her time, licking the hastily dripping ice cream from her hand.

“Sure, I guess.”

“It’s not that exciting, I promise,” Clint presses as they continue to walk. Natasha rolls her eyes.

“If it’s not so exciting, why do you want to tell me about it?”

“Because. You told me things about you, and I thought I should return the favor.” He stops about a third of the way up towards the Brooklyn side, the spread of Manhattan’s arms stretching behind him, and hoists himself easily onto one of the thick pillars separating the bridge from the traffic zipping dangerously below.

“Hey!” Natasha drops her ice cream on the ground and sprints forward, and Clint grins from his perch.

“What? Afraid I’m going to fall over? Kill myself? Do you actually care about me now?”

“Shut up,” Natasha orders, hauling him off the ledge and pulling him back onto the safety of the pedestrian walkway. She finds that she’s breathing heavily, her heart racing with adrenaline and what she recognizes as fear, because in that moment, she _had_ been absolutely terrified that she would somehow lose him after all of this. “ _Yes_ , I care, and if you think I don’t, you should consider why I haven’t abandoned your ass already.” She’s so close to him that she can feel his less than savory breath on her cheek when he exhales, and unlike when they’ve lain awake at night staring at each other underneath the guise of moonlight, this is different. In the heat and under the sharp sun, she can see every freckle, every pore, every tremble across his lip; she can see the sweat beading along his hairline and at his mouth and the light scar along his ears. Natasha swallows as she steps back.

“Um. Anyway. Where were we?”

Clint doesn’t move, his eyes shifting downward, as if he’s also trying to avoid a moment that Natasha’s not sure was even a moment at all. “I was...I was gonna tell you about my life.”

Natasha nods quickly. “Right. Yeah.” She wipes her hands on her pants, the sticky remnants of ice cream leaving smear marks along the thin fabric. “Okay, so, what about your life?”

Clint looks at her sideways, moving his mouth back and forth in silence. “Uh, well. My brother and I were born in Iowa. My dad was an alcoholic. Mom was okay, but dad had a temper, and it eventually cost him. Well, them. Car accident when we were kids. That's how I ended up on my own in the first place.”

“Fuck,” Natasha mutters, and Clint shrugs listlessly.

“Yeah. After they died, we got shipped off to an orphanage. Probably would’ve been okay if I stayed there, but the kids were kind of...not nice to someone who was scrawny and skinny and had hearing problems. I wasn't exactly a draw with the ladies, if you know what I mean.” He smiles wryly, the smile of someone who Natasha can tell has hidden away horrible stories and memories underneath an incredibly thick skin.

“So how did you end up in New York?”

“Circus,” Clint says with an air of boasting. “My brother and I were afraid we’d be separated by a family or something, cause what are the odds someone wants two damaged children, let alone one? So one day, my brother saw a flyer for a circus that was riding through town, and we snuck out and ended up talking to the guy that owned it. He needed help with some grunt work, and we were easy to convince, so we ran away and joined up.”

“Your brother…” Natasha trails off, remembering what Clint had told her about her brother leaving him on his own. “Still with the circus?”

“Nah, he cut out, too,” Clint says. “I should’ve gone with him, but he left without telling me. I stayed for awhile but then decided I didn’t wanna be, well...abused or anything anymore. So I ran, too. This is the last place we docked at before we took off again. Figured I’d just kind of tough it out somehow. I mean, you know what they say about New York. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, right?”

Natasha stares at Clint sadly, and realizes how much she feels for the boy in front of her. In some ways, he was just as lost as she was, coming from somewhere that took advantage of you and then shoved you out into the cold unnecessarily. In other ways, he was a lot worse off, having never had a real lesson on learning how to survive in the first place. Natasha wonders if he’s ever had someone to trust that hasn’t walked out on him, and immediately regrets the “abandoned” comment that had come out earlier.

“Anyway, so. That’s my life. Mostly.” He nods in the silence, tilting his head. “Figured you didn’t need the whole sob story about the hearing loss and stealing and stuff.”

“No,” Natasha says quietly after a moment, because while part of her is curious, the other part of her knows what it means to open up layers of yourself to other people, no matter how much you trust them -- particularly if those layers included being hurt in some way. “Wanna walk?”

“Huh?” Clint looks confused and Natasha shrugs, looking out at the water.

“Let’s just walk,” she says, gesturing to the bridge. “Together. I hear there’s awesome dollar pizza on the other side, if you’re into that. I know I am.”

Clint smiles tentatively and takes the hand that Natasha’s holding out, and he doesn’t let go.

 

* * *

 

 

They walk back over the bridge later that night after spending too many hours wandering around the Brooklyn cobblestones, mostly so that they can take full advantage of the skyline in all its diamond-sparkling glory. Halfway back over the bridge, they stop again, this time to stand by one of the pillars and stare at the sight in front of them, the jagged illuminated points that represent the greatest city in the world. Pedestrians weave around them, some throwing glances, and Natasha wonders if they’re aware that the people they’re probably silently “aww’ing” about are two homeless children. They keep their hands interlocked as they continue to walk back towards Manhattan, barely pausing to let go of each other’s grip.

Exhaustion hits their bodies hard, so they decide to take their chances and jump a turnstile, catching a subway back to the building where they’ve been staying. When they finally make their way back up to the roof, Clint collapses on his bedding and sighs, rolling over and placing his hands on back of his head.

“That was good. Also, best pizza I ever had.”

“It was pretty good,” Natasha agrees, sitting down next to him. As tired as she is, she can’t make herself lie down.

“If I ever stop living on the streets and get a dog, I’d name it that, I think. Pizza Dog. It’s got a nice ring to it.” He laughs, as if he’s amused by his own words, but Natasha doesn’t laugh back, instead training her gaze towards the sky.

“Sometimes, I think about leaving,” Natasha says slowly. Clint sobers, sitting up.

“Leaving?”

Natasha arches a brow. “Why not? It’s not like we have any reason to make this place our home, right?”

“I don’t…” Clint trails off. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “Would you really do it, though? Leave New York?”

“Maybe,” Natasha says, because the more she thinks about it, the more she’s tempted by the thought. “I don’t belong here, really. Not any more than you do. It’s just where I ended up, and it’s where you ended up, too.” She shrugs. “They once told me, in the Red Room, that I’d have a place in the world. But...I don’t think I really have a place in the world.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I hear that. I mean, if I hadn’t met you, I dunno what would’ve happened to me. Maybe I would’ve been dead.”

The thought of Clint lying on the street somewhere, starving and cold and defeated and beat up, is a thought that hurts her more than she realizes. Natasha could certainly survive on her own, but Clint had opened her eyes to the fact that having someone by your side meant that you didn’t have to share all the pain of surviving alone.

“You’re pretty street smart,” Natasha replies with a small smile, watching his face color slightly. “And you’re more optimistic and creative than you give yourself credit for. I think you’d have been just fine on your own.” She pauses. “I mean, if you _are_ up for adventure, we _could_ always see what’s on the other side.”

Clint waves his hand. “Jersey.”

“Asshole.” She grins at him. “I mean, the other side.” She waits until she catches his eye, and he stares at her in shock.

“You’re kidding me, right? _California_? How would we even get there?”

“I dunno,” says Natasha. “Hitch a train, maybe. Or steal a ride with a nice driver. I mean, I think between both of us we can figure out how to travel without getting caught. And we’re kids, so they’re bound to take pity on us. Maybe we can keep performing in Central Park, get some more money so we can scrounge a decent ticket somewhere.”

Clint laughs quietly at her words, falling back on his pillows. “You really think we can do this?”

“Yeah,” Natasha says, feeling more and more confident. “I mean, we both didn’t come from the best life. But maybe we can rewrite each other’s stories. Start over. I mean, we’ve got each other, right?”

Clint looks over and smiles, his face settling into an expression of relief and contentment. “Yeah,” he agrees. “We’ve got each other.”

Natasha smiles back and lies down next to him, curling next to his body in the space she knows so well. Clint’s hand rests on her back and she realizes that she feels warm, comforted, that she feels like she belongs somewhere for the first time in her life, even though she knows she's not supposed to belong anywhere.

Natasha closes her eyes, lets Clint hold her, and for the first time, she dreams of her future.


End file.
